'Show us how you'll lower taxes': Boris Johnson asks Chancellor to reveal plans after admitting 'shock' at higher rates than other countries

Boris Johnson has called on the Chancellor to 'set a course for low tax', admitting he is shocked that Britons pay higher levels than workers in other large European countries.

The Mayor of London, seen by some Tories as having ambitions for the Conservative leadership, said 'a clear direction of travel' on the issue of personal taxation was needed.

He lambasted the previous Labour Government's policies as having been 'miserable', 'anti-wealth creation' and 'resentful' - and claims he says he 'will lay money' that the Chancellor, George Osborne, wants to reduce tax in the Budget in March.

Tax: Boris Johnson, Mayor of London (left) has urged George Osborne to signal a move from what he called Labour's 'miserable and anti-wealth creation' tax regime

Currently at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Mr Johnson said in an interview with the Daily Telegraph: ''Can we endlessly go on with a tax rate that is higher than not just America and Japan but also France, Germany and Italy? All these countries we've always beaten on tax.'

He added: 'We need to set a course for low tax.'

Mr Johnson is especially critical of the 50p top rate of income tax, which the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition Government inherited from Labour.

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Mr Osborne has described the 50p rate as a 'temporary' measure but there are no plans as yet for its repeal.

The Mayor said: 'I think we need to set out a pretty clear direction of travel, a pro-enterprise direction of travel.

'I understand about 50p tax politically but there has got to be a sense of where we are going and where we want to be as a country.'

Warning: Bank of England governor Mervyn King said the wage squeeze is likely to continue this year and the cost of living is set to keep on rising

Mr Johnson said he did not want his comments to be seen as critical of his Tory colleagues, claiming Mr Osborne shared his views about taxes and that reducing them was something 'he wants to do'.

'Labour have created a climate that is miserable and anti-wealth creation and was resentful... it takes a real effort of political will to dispel that,' he told the Telegraph.

'I hope very much that that is what George will do and I will lay money he will. That is the way forward and I know he thinks this.'

David Cameron will warn today in a speech in Davos that the scale of the
challenge facing the British economy is 'immense' and requires a
long-term 'transformation'.

But Mr Johnson's comments come amid a welter of bad news on the economy for the Government, with figures today showing consumer confidence took its biggest knock for nearly 20 years, and union leaders meeting to discuss co-ordinating their response to the Government's spending cuts, including the prospect of industrial action.

Bank of England’s governor Mervyn King said just this week that families are being crippled by the biggest squeeze in their finances since the 1920s amid toxic combination of soaring inflation and pay freezes or paltry pay rises.

That followed surprise official figures from the Office for National Statistics suggesting the economy went into reverse between October and December, prompting fears of a 'double dip' recession.

And even the outgoing head of the CBI - a group seen as being traditionally supportive of Conservative policies - warned the coalition: ‘It is not enough just to slam on the spending brakes.’

Sir Richard Lambert criticised the Government's failure to ‘articulate in big-picture terms its vision of what the UK economy might become under its stewardship’.